Or play catch and release? Throw Doggie back into the swamp. Pull him out whenever needed. A snitch. A born-to-be bitch. A fish.
Ghost dailo Lucky wasn’t any help anymore, thought Jack, but now he had another confidential informant to work on, a low-level, street-rank 49. A say gou jai, dead dog, in the Ghost Legion.
Jack decided to release him.
“It’s your lucky night, punk!” Jack uncuffed Doggie and booted him out of the van. “Your takeout should be ready now!” he called out, watching Doggie shuffle off back toward the Harmonious Garden.
A fish in a barrel.
The Tombs guards allowed Jack the use of their internal directory, and the first call went as he expected: the night operator at Edgewater PD informed him that shift detectives were out in the field, but if it was an emergency, she might be able to patch through a message.
Jack left his number, said he’d be in Edgewater in the morning.
He checked the time, figured it wasn’t too late to be calling Vincent Chin.
O. G
THE MORNING BROUGHT Jack back to the side streets behind the Tombs facility. He was looking for Vincent Chin, editor of the United National, Chinatown’s oldest Chinese-language newspaper. Vincent had assisted Jack on previous Chinatown cases by providing not only what was fit to print but also neighborhood gossip, street talk, and unsubstantiated chatter from old women and shiftless men in smoky coffee shops.
The United National was Chinatown’s hometown paper and had been Pa’s favorite.
Jack followed the streets leading into TriBeCa, the gentrified “triangle” of streets below the Canal Street thoroughfare. He’d brought along two containers of nai cha tea from Eddie’s.
The National was located in a renovated storefront on White Street across from the Men’s Mission and was the only Chinatown newspaper without a color section. The pressmen still typeset by hand the thousands of Chinese characters needed to go to print.
Vincent, who looked younger than his forty years, was in the copy room reviewing what the pressmen had laid out when Jack walked in.
“In my office,” Vincent said. “I’ll be a few minutes.”
A SMALL OFFICE, but on the editorial desk along the wall, Vincent had laid out an array of Chinese news articles, arranged in a loose chronological order, featuring Bossy Jook Mun Gee and his family.
Jack couldn’t read all the Chinese words, but he scanned the accompanying photographs and could figure out what the story was about. Everything in black and white, Cantonese block characters like ideographs.
The first news article, in a “Profiles” piece, was a full-page historical perspective on three generations of a prominent family.
The Gees.
The Gees were an old-line Chinatown family, dating their presence in New York City to 1925, to the remnants of the bachelor generation. There was a posed studio photo of the patriarch, Gee Duck Hong, with floral accents and a Chinese landscape in the background.
Old man Gee started Dynasty Noodles, which became the largest Chinese pasta manufacturing company on the East Coast. Expanded the gwai lo taste for lo mein, chow mein, and wonton noodles. A Gum Shan, a mountain of noodles.
There was a photo of Bossy Jook Mun Gee, who’d been promoted to director at Dynasty Noodles, and in a separate photo with his young sons, Gary and Francis, attending local gifted schools.
Jack smiled. Three generations of a successful, assimilated Chinese American family.
“What the article doesn’t mention,” Vincent said, coming into the closet office, “is that the old man Gee Duck was in bed with the Hip Ching Association and had his greedy fingers big time in paper identities and illegal alcohol and untaxed cigarettes.”
“Good morning.” Jack grinned.
“Morning.” Vincent smiled. “The old man had Triad connections with the Hok Nam Moon in Toishan, and to an import-export company that tied him to the opium and heroin trade.”
“Nice guy,” Jack said.
“The article doesn’t mention his arrests for bookmaking, extortion, and gambling rackets. All before my time,” Vincent said. “In 1950, his partner in Dynasty Noodles died mysteriously while on a trip to Taiwan-something about a traffic accident and a heart attack.”
Jack took a sip of his nai cha. Bossy was known to be a backer of the Hip Ching gambling dens, Chinatown liquor stores, and dry-goods companies he could manipulate to smuggle contraband.
The Chinatown buildings the old man bought, with the backing of the Gee Association, when nobody wanted them back in the 1930s, were now worth untold millions. Vincent added, after taking a moment to add brown sugar to his tea, “They have an office on Pell Street. Manage all the real estate and businesses there.”
The second article included a photo of a younger Bossy, maybe fortyish, smiling on a pristine lot of land in Edgewater, New Jersey, not far from the Yaohan Plaza Japanese sushi mall on the waterfront.
It was an architectural feature, translated from Design Digest magazine. Bossy James Gee was planning a large renovation of his house to accommodate an extended immigrant family. The article featured a rendering of the house with all the latest gadgets and accoutrements: a koi garden inside a security perimeter, a two-car garage, a satellite dish, an outdoor pool with a hot tub.
His sons looked older in the accompanying photo. Teenagers? One much taller than the other. Standing off in the distance. Dad, doing all the posing, and talking for them all.
A modern family in a suburban setting.
There was no mention of the actual address of the site, but a traffic sign in the photo showed its proximity to Yaohan Plaza.
Attached was a little follow-up article on complaints from longtime residents of Edgewater about Asians building “monster homes” in the area. Bossy’s neighbors, citing construction noise and inconveniences and traffic problems, complained that the large, three-level houses were ostentatious and detracted from the “rustic simplicity” of the neighborhood.
“Same thing happened in Vancouver and Toronto. And other places,” said Vincent. “Wealthy Chinese immigrants arrive in a formerly all-white area. They buy a house, tear it down. Then they build a giant multilevel house on the plot, to the resentment of the neighbors.” He blew the steam off his tea. “Hey, Asians have big families, right? But it’s caused big problems. Whole Chinese communities have been uprooted in the face of what some consider racism and moved to more isolated but friendlier locations.”
The fourth piece was an investigative report on surveillance operations conducted by the OCCB-the Organized Crime Control Bureau-focusing on Jook Mun “James” Gee as a member of the Hip Ching tong, being investigated for illegal gambling, smuggling contraband, and affiliation with the notorious Chinatown Black Dragons street gang. Possible ATF investigation. The Hip Chings themselves were targets of a federal probe into RICO-Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations-activities.
Bossy had hired Solomon Schwartz, one of the top criminal defense lawyers in the city. There were no indictments. Schwartz got “circumstantial evidence” dismissed at that point.
“They nicknamed him ‘Bossy,’” Vincent continued, “because of the way he liked to order people around. Bossy Gee, only son of the legendary Gee Duck Hong. Fifteen years ago he was accused of hiring an underaged Chinese girl for a massage, and then molesting her. The teenager wanted to press charges, but her mother stopped her, and the case was settled out of court.”